Daisy Chains
by KawaiiBoushi
Summary: Relationships are like flowers. Delicate, with the potential for beauty, and once they're gone you can't bring them back.


**A/N: Hello! Boushi here! For those of you who read Ghost Club, if you're waiting for the story I promised you then – this isn't it. ^.^" Daisy Chains is something that came to me while visiting family on Mother's Day. I wrote it the next day, but haven't gotten around to publishing it until now. I kinda surprised myself, since this is so different from my typical writing style, so it was both fun and challenging to write. I hope you enjoy, and that Daisy Chains tides you over for the next few weeks until my next fanfic! **

"_AaaaaaCHOO!_" A cloud of dust swirled around Tamaki's head and he wavered precariously on the spot from lightheadedness.

"Master Tamaki, how many times must we tell you, stay in bed! You're not well!" The maids that had been assigned to watch over Tamaki as he slept off his fever tried to drag him out of his closet.

"No, no, I'm cleaning," he sniffed, shaking them off and resuming his attempts to dust the contents of his shelves. Normally Tamaki let the maids take care of keeping his room clean, but today, on a feverish whim, he had ventured into the depths of his walk-in closet (which was more or less the size of Haruhi's entire apartment) to tidy up.

"Master Tamaki, I insist you come back to bed at once," said the older maid firmly, grabbing Tamaki's arm and pulling. As she did so, a pile of boxes came tumbling down on him, and he fell over backward.

The younger maid gasped. "Ohhhh, if something happens to Master Tamaki, Shima will have our heads!"

The older maid helped Tamaki to his feet as the younger one started stacking boxes back on the shelf. "I'm fine," he said, kneeling down to help. "Hmm, what's this?" One box stood out from the others. Rather than a plain storage container, it appeared to be an old, beat-up shoebox with foreign labeling. Upon closer inspection, Tamaki recognized it as French, and noticed something scrawled along the side in a child's handwriting.

_René Tamaki Richard de Grantenue's Box of Keepsakes, _it read in French, and a reminiscent smile appeared on Tamaki's face. "I remember this," he said to himself, suddenly standing up and heading back to his room. The maids were surprised by his sudden change in attitude, but shrugged and followed him, grateful that he was going back to rest without a fight.

"Let's see here…" Tamaki pulled the lid off the box and was overwhelmed with the scent of old memories. When he was packing to move to Japan, he didn't take much, but he'd filled this shoebox with things that made him happy, things to remind him of his old life. There were toys that his father had brought him from Japan, a few pieces of French candy, photos of his mother, drawings he'd done as a child, and sheet music for the piano. As Tamaki lifted the papers from the bottom, something fell out of them onto his lap: a wilted, brown chain of flowers that had lost their scent. Gently picking up the delicate item, Tamaki wondered for a moment why he had kept something like this. He remembered saving the chain for years and years, pressing it between the pages of a book when it was still fresh to preserve the petals, but he couldn't for the life of him recall what made it so special.

…

Meanwhile, the Host Club, a little lonelier than usual without the presence of the king and his entourage, was just wrapping up.

"You know, Kyoya, you weren't my first love." Renge was "helping" the hosts put away the props they'd borrowed from the Drama Club for their Greek cosplay, which in her case consisted mostly of her getting out more costumes than she put back.

"No?" Kyoya didn't particularly care, but he was hopeful that if Renge started talking, she'd be distracted from making a mess.

"Back when I was younger, before I actually lived in France, I would go to visit family for a month every summer break. That's when I met him." Putting down the pair of gossamer wings she'd been about to try on, Renge looked off into the distance, an uncharacteristically pensive look crossing her face.

"I was ten, I think. I was angry with my cousin for scratching my Uki Doki Memorial disc and had run away from home. Well, their home, but you know what I mean. Anyway, I ran to a nearby park to let off steam. While I was there, I saw this boy, about my age. He was tall, blond, just amazing…oh, I could eat three balls of rice!" Renge cried, ruining any illusion of a serene young maiden in love. Clearing her throat, she went on.

"I did what all kids that age do, I just walked up to him and asked if he wanted to be my friend. He flashed a perfect smile at me and said he'd love to, and we went and played on the monkey bars together. I went back every day I was in France that summer, and he was almost always there. When I went back to Japan, I had no way to contact him, since I didn't even think to ask him his name." Renge sighed. "Every time I visited France after that, I went to that park whenever I could, but I never saw him again. By the time I moved there I'd given up, but I haven't forgotten about him. Isn't it so romantic?" she asked with a smile.

"Yes, quite," Kyoya muttered, not really interested in Renge's summer romance. "Anyway, now that we've finished, it's time for us to leave. We're visiting Tamaki to see how he's doing."

Renge snorted derisively. "Count me out. I don't care about Mr. Lukewarm Prince."

Kyoya shrugged as the Host Club left. "Suit yourself."

…

"Was this from her?" Tamaki murmured, memories of that time stirring for the first time in years.

When he had been about eleven years old, his mother had taken him to the park in the summer one day and he had met a pretty brunette there. He went back to the park whenever he could afterwards in hopes of seeing her again and developed quite the crush on the girl.

"She made this for me then," Tamaki remembered. It was one of those days when his mother couldn't even get out of bed, and Tamaki's grandparents had taken him to the park he seemed to love so much to try and cheer him up. However, he refused to play, simply sitting in the shade of a tree and crying. That's when she came rushing over, asking what was wrong. As Tamaki explained, she sat across from him, plucking daisies from the grass and weaving them into a crown. When he finished his story, the girl smiled at him and placed the crown on his head.

_I'm sorry. But your mom will get better soon, I know it,_ she had promised. Despite hearing these words from everyone he knew over and over, they managed to bring a smile to his face this time, and he let the girl help him up and followed her to the swing set. The next day he came running to the park, bursting with excitement to tell his friend that his mother was feeling a little better today, and – she wasn't there, for the first time since he'd met her. He returned every day the rest of the summer, but it was as if she'd dropped off the face of the earth. After that, school started back up, his mother's health began to deteriorate again, and he never got a chance to go back to the park. He kept the flower chain, though, the only thing he had to prove that the girl hadn't been a figment of his imagination.

"I wonder what ever happened to her." He sighed, and as his breath stirred the daisies, they couldn't hold on any longer, turning to dust in his hands. "Oh." A sense of disappointment settled in, and Tamaki just stared at the remnants of his daisy chain for a minute before a knock on the door brought him back to reality.

"Tamaki, it's us," Kyoya called through the door.

"Oh, come in!" Tamaki replied, pouring the dust into the box and piling everything else back on top of it. As he set the box aside, the door opened and the Host Club walked in.

"How are you feeling, Tama-chan?" Hunny asked, sitting down on Tamaki's bed near his feet.

"Better, thanks, Sempai." Tamaki smiled at his friends, all thoughts of the mystery girl fading from his mind as he laid eyes on Haruhi.

Kyoya walked over to Tamaki's bedside table and placed the day's homework next to the box. "Here you go."

"Thanks, Kyoya."

Before the bespectacled boy could say anything else, something on the floor caught his eye. He knelt down and picked up a small photograph from next to Tamaki's bed. In it, what must have been a younger Tamaki was standing next to a brown-haired girl. "Who's this?" Kyoya asked, straightening up.

"Hmm?" Tamaki took the photograph and raised his eyebrows. "Oh, I didn't remember that I had a picture of her! This was a girl I met one summer in France six or seven years ago. We played together at a park near my mother's house for a while, but after only a couple weeks, I never saw her again."

"Is that so," Kyoya said as Tamaki placed the photograph back in his shoebox. What Renge had told him earlier was on the tip of his tongue, but something – he wasn't sure what – stopped him from pursuing the matter. He wondered for a while what could have been had the two children in the picture met again under different circumstances, but shook the thought away. Perhaps in life, there are some things that just aren't meant to be; some questions that are better left unanswered.


End file.
